Line By Line: Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World

"There were so many miracles at work: that a blossom might become a peach, that a bee could make honey in its thorax, that rain might someday fall. I thought then about the seasons changing, and in the gray of night I could almost will myself to see the azure sky, the gold of the maple leaves, the crimson of the ripe apples, the hoarfrost on the grass."

"I'd forgotten how your blood flows toward a person when they move, so that all at once, you know what the pull of gravity feels like. And you know that this is something strong and important, something that you need for life, this woman moving through the room."

"I have since wondered if a person can know how deep a thing goes without getting outside of it, without taking it apart, without, in fact, ruining it."

"Now, in my more charitable moods, I wonder if our hardworking community members punished us for something as intangible as whimsy. We would not have felt eccentric in a northern city, but in Prairie Center we were perhaps outside the bounds of the collective imagination."

"It was about forgiving. I understood that forgiveness itself was strong, durable—like strands of a web weaving around us, holding us."